hetheeme:It's really dispicable that Obama handed the shuttles to states that supported him. It's not like Houston has any kind of link to the space program worthy of a shuttle, right? No, send two to Califormia and one to NYC.

Shameful.

The ONLY debatable choice is Enterprise going to New York City and that is justified by superior public outreach potential of superior NYC tourism. Houston has a Saturn V and you're not going to get a single new tourist to Houston who would somehow be interested in a shuttle but not in a Saturn V and Mission Control. All the space shuttles were built, tested, upgraded, and overhauled in California, launched and landed in Florida, and the Smithsonian was in DC before Obama was born. Enterprise did not fly in space and Houston received a full-size orbiter mockup that, unlike any of the real orbiters, has an interior that tourists can visit. In other words, everybody complaining about Texas' situation in this can STFU and DIAF because the argument has no merit whatsoever. Goddammit.

One goes to the Smithsonian. One goes where NASA has most all of it's other cool stuff in a museum. One goes to the West Coast for geographic balance. One goes to the tourist capital of the world (Paris can fark off).

It's not about the history of the program. It's about exposure to the maximum number of people in some of largest museum destinations in the US. Houston is not a major international city with lots of tourists, sorry to break it to you. Disneyworld is, and Kennedy Space Center draws a big crowd on its own. LA draws crowds. DC and New York certainly do.

I'm sorry, it's not that it was political repayment, it's just that Houston had a weaker case than all of the other locations for getting one.